Various machines have been developed for pressing juice from vegetables and fruit. In my recently issued U.S. Pat. No. 5,031,524 a combined compact grater and press is disclosed which utilizes a single press bag in which the fruit pulp is pressed. This unit combines all of the elements of feeding, shredding, pressing, pomace disposal, juice filtration and dispensing, which elements can all be accomplished in one sanitary unit. Thus, the unit can be placed in a retail store and live up to design criteria of the National Sanitation Foundation. While the foregoing machine preformed in a satisfactory manner, it required a 11/2 horsepower motor due to the high energy requirements of the shredder. This in turn required that the machine be connected to a 220 volt circuit within the store.
While my prior juice press assembly employed a variation of a cheese grater for shredding the vegetables or fruit to be pressed, other forms of comminutors have been employed in similar machines. Thus machines have been known which have employed cylindrical drums provided with pegs or knives, as shown in U. S. Pat. No. 1,698,613 and 2,087,438, respectively. In addition, U. S. Pat. No. 2,417,564 discloses a vegetable and fruit comminuting device employing a disk adapted to rotate in a vertical plane, the disk being provided with twelve radially extending strips 9, the edge of each strip being provided with teeth 10. In operation, this unit will triturate the vegetables or fruit.
In the prior art machines referred to above the vegetables or fruit are comminuted into fine particles, requiring relatively high energy input into the comminuting device. In addition, the prior art machines have required the replacement of the comminuting device when fruits or vegetables of differing hardness are to be comminuted, for example when switching from apples to carrots.